Another popped seam, another look at the Chancellor's New Clothes

A little while ago, I mentioned the fraud that was the Rhee Regime's slogan of "aggressive national search" for principals for the DC schools. Well, the Post has finally gotten around to looking into the actual data from the recent round of principal pools and has come up with some unsurprising numbers:

About two-thirds of the more than 700 applicants were from the surrounding suburbs or already working for the school system, according to figures provided
by the chancellor's office. It's not a surprising result. The city offers no relocation assistance to principals, according to application information on the D.C. schools Web site. And as "at will" employees, there is no guarantee that a job would last for more than a year.

So the principals class of 2008-09, which officially began work last week, looks decidedly local. Along with Taylor and Jordon, new hires include Terry Dade, a former Fairfax County teacher taking over at Tyler Elementary in Southeast, and Maurice Kennard, an assistant principal at Walker-Jones Elementary in Northwest hired to head the new Francis-Stevens Educational Center in Foggy Bottom, which will offer pre-kindergarten through eighth grade.

Of course, if you were a high-performing principal in a good situation in your own district, would you really want to come to a system where the chancellor appears to be offering no job security even for employees who do good jobs? Would you trade a system of checks and balances for an imperial chancellory, where courtiers curry favor and your employment prospects hinge on who you know rather than how you perform? Probably not.

And it's not as if Rhee doesn't know better. Her old organization, the New Teacher Project, actually put out a policy paper on principal hiring. Apparently, Rhee didn't bother to read it.

If you really want a laugh (or a cry) you should check out the chart on page four of the report...the "model principal hiring process." Apparently, principals shouldn't be hired in rush jobs, where you announce a vacancy on a Friday and scoop together a panel to interview candidates on a Saturday eight days later.